Last June, Spacemetric announced a new partnership with the UAV manufacturer Sky Eye Innovations. To better understand their operational conditions and also meet one of their potential customers, last Monday Spacemetric participated in a field exercise together with Sky Eye Innovations and the Rescue Service in Hultsfred.

In critical situations, as well as immediately after an accident, In recent years, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), civil protection authorities haves increased dramatically the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), both in critical situations, as well as immediately after an accident, in civil protection in recent years. One reason for this is that the rescue services are able to cordon off an area, including airspace, to ensure the safety, efficiency and timesaving use of UAVs in civil protection operations.

Spacemetric’s role

Spacemetric develops the software Sky Eye Map Sense, which accompanies all of Sky Eye Innovations devices. In the software, the user is able to collect all the images and movies from the UAV, search for image products and display these on a map where the positions of all images and movies are recorded. The user can share his/her data with other users via a web portal. One example of the use of this feature is in missions involving several emergency services, all in need of immediate access to the collected material. Furthermore, the Spacemetric software has an extremely useful additional capability – it supports the retrieval and use of data from satellites. The user is thus able to see both real-time image products from UAVs, giving a detailed insight of the situation, and the latest satellite images, offering simultaneous views over larger areas for overview.

Real-life operation with UAVs

During the Hultsfred forest fire-fighting operations last summer, a Sky Eye Innovations UAV flew in the final fire extinction stage in order to identify the need for additional extinguishing. The mission was flown with a FLIR A655 which, through special software, allows filtering of pixels against selected temperature values. At the time of the mission, this software was not available for use in the field, but Fire Chief Michael Hesselgård is still pleased with the results and sees great benefits in having a flying system that carries this type of thermal-imaging cameras.

Next stop, Vegas

Sky Eye Innovations and Spacemetric will support Viper Drones at the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas 31 October – 4 November. We will bring valuable information from the visit to Hultsfred and will make good use of the knowledge that the fire-fighters in Hultsfred shared with us.

Finally, we would like to thank the Rescue Service in Hultsfred for all their help. Special thanks goes to our hosts, Fire Chief Michael Hesselgård and to Firefighter Ulf Bowein.